Visual Arts

Architecture Program

Learning through creative exploration is at the core of the Architecture program at Rutgers Preparatory School. Project-oriented and project-based learning are chief focal points in the classroom. In architectural construction, a base is needed before one can build vertically; the foundation year in the program provides this base. Students become familiar with terms, tools, and processes that are used at every level.

The second year in the program’s sequence creates the walls on top of the foundation. With a solid base of knowledge, students create projects that hold real world applications. They also participate in multiple design-build projects. The work allows students to fine tune previously learned applications and start to take further calculated risks with their ideas.

The capstone year of the program completes the house. Critical thinking is emphasized during the final year. The importance of the process is as critical as the final outcome. The ultimate year also guides a transition from hand rendering to computer graphics. The multi-tiered Architectural program at Rutgers Preparatory School supports students becoming comfortable as designers and encourages independent creative thought. With the completion of each course, a new level of comprehension better informs each young designer’s passion and in turn portfolio.

Drawing and Painting Programs

The Drawing and Painting program permits students to move from being aspiring artists to accomplished creative individuals. Students in every level are introduced to many artists, movements, and theories. Technical and creative growth is fostered, as is verbal and written critical assessment.

The Drawing and Painting program supports art production and critique at every class level. Introductory classes address skill sets common to all the arts. Students of introductory classes learn to deconstruct our surrounding visual world, and develop skill sets that lead to successful rendering.

Intermediate students explore complex drawing techniques; observational drawing moves slowly into abstraction. During this transition, students develop an ability to manipulate a variety of painting media.

Advanced students champion skills of recent years while exploring demands of the career artist; assignments are specialized and increasingly determined by the students. Advanced level students of the Drawing and Painting program work at collegiate levels technically and conceptually; students frequently are accepted to noted programs after graduation.

Ceramics Program

The ceramics program is designed to nurture the individual student’s development of abilities. The program challenges and expands their knowledge and skill sets from the introductory level to the fourth year Senior. The core of all classes involves learning and then understanding by the physical act of doing, redoing and applying covered material.

The first year course introduces many methods and techniques for use in creating and imagining with clay and ceramic materials.

The second and third year courses expand the student’s relationships and nuances of the materials. They practice more complex methods and techniques. By the end of the Intermediate level of the Ceramics program, students are communicating issues, relationships, and realities that exist within the material and their own individual work.

The final year of study puts more emphasis on the student to assist and/or lead all processes within the studio: from the making of clay and glazes to the loading of kilns. The work at this level is student project-oriented, supported and guided by the instructor. This allows the student to be exposed to a collegiate level-working environment.

Photography Program

The full curriculum of the Photography program rewards students increasingly at every level. The Foundation course is partially darkroom yet mostly digital. By term's end, the students will have created hundreds of works, mastered important Photoshop tools and developed advanced camera usage skills.

These acquired skills allow the Intermediate student to stylishly compose rather than merely document. Advanced level students create entire bodies of work that champion a broad contemporary theme. Collegiate in scope, the work is crafted well and delivered to the viewer in both traditional and multi-media formats.

All levels of coursework involve study of masters and critique of photographic statements. The multi-tiered Photography Program at Rutgers Preparatory School helps to empower the young photographer at every level with the ability to speak with increasing fluency in the medium.